


Four Stages

by Productive_Writings



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Amputation, Devil Breaker, Devil Bringer, Gen, Prosthetic Limb, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23175046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Productive_Writings/pseuds/Productive_Writings
Summary: Three times Nero thought negatively of the changes to his right arm, and one time it changed for the better.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	1. The Gaining of a Demonic Appendage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Set pre-DMC4, after the demon attack 2 months prior to in-game events. I just really liked Nero’s Devil Bringer. I know he didn’t though, so this happened._

Nero looked at his right arm.

Only yesterday morning his shoulder had been impaled by an Assault demon. The other Knights who responded to the incident had rushed him to the hospital, and the doctor had told him that there was significant nerve damage. Apparently, he might never be able to use the arm again.

Today, he was curling each finger in turn, turning his wrist from side to side, bending his elbow as if nothing had happened.

He might have called himself incredibly lucky, if it weren’t for the way his arm looked.

It had started as a vague blueish tinge around his sutures, some time in the early afternoon. At first, he’d thought it was some kind of poison – but Assaults didn’t produce venom. His second thought was infection, especially when the colour started to spread.

He’d thought at first that the scales were some kind of necrosis, that he might lose the arm entirely. Now he wondered which scenario was actually the better one.

Overnight, the scales had spread to coat not just his shoulder, but the entire limb attached to it, thickening along his lower arm into reddish brown armoured plates – and Nero had immediately discharged himself from the hospital.

Now he was sat in the bathroom of the house he had shared with Kyrie and Credo since his childhood, door locked behind him. He reached for the first aid kit, furiously winding the appendage in gauze, applying more and more layers as the damned thing began to literally _glow_ from beneath them, demanding to be seen.

Nero gritted his teeth, biting back tears. How much further was it going to spread?

How was he supposed to explain this to Credo? To Kyrie?

How could the only family in Fortuna to have ever accepted him… accept this?

What was the good in miraculously avoiding permanent damage, if it meant losing everything else?

He knew he had to hide it, to play along as though his arm really was injured beyond repair.

In some ways, perhaps it still was.

Nero looked at his right arm, and he hated it.


	2. The Changing of a Demonic Appendage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Taking place probably a year or two before DMC5/Before the Nightmare. In my opinion, we didn't get to see enough of this version of the Devil Bringer._

Nero looked at his right arm.

In the years since it had first taken on demonic form, Nero had (with Kyrie’s help) grown to accept it and the power it gave him. That didn’t make it any less troubling, though, when the limb had started to change its appearance a second time.

It was subtle things, at first; the luminous portion of his palm had started to go dull, the scales that coated it becoming thicker and less transparent, as if simply turning callus. It didn’t particularly change in colour, simply taking on a darker hue. His claws had hardened as well, although somewhat more drastically, turning from their icy blue glow to a solid black.

The real issue was when the red plated armour on his forearm had begun to peel off. Each section in turn had desaturated in colour, becoming more flimsy with each passing day until they had finally come loose to reveal a new hardened layer underneath - this one in a darker shade of maroon, almost black in certain lighting, and bearing more resemblance to reptilian scales, particularly in their crocodile-like formation on the backs of his fingers. It wasn’t a bad change, really, just an awkward transitional period that Nero felt as if he could have done without. The new plating was certainly less bulky though, and without as many spiked protrusions, which would hopefully help save Kyrie a lot of time from mending the holes he always managed to put in his clothes.

This was Nero’s first time seeing the entire arm in its new state, now that it had stopped doing… whatever it was it had been doing (or, at least he hoped it was finished). The scales on his upper arm has also recently peeled away, like an old snakeskin, and were now a similar muted teal to the ones on his palm, but with a subtle pearlescent sheen from how new they were.

Again, the new change wasn’t _bad_. However, it gave way to the possibility that his arm could change again in the future, and who knew how it might look then? Or if it would still be just his one arm that changed – but that was a possibility he’d rather not think about. As long as he still had Kyrie’s support, though, he guessed it didn’t really matter.

Nero looked at his right arm; as inconvenient as it may be, it was a part of him – a useful part of him, he reminded himself – and it was something he’d just have to live with.


	3. The Losing of a Demonic Appendage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Taking place somewhere in the time between the DMC5 Prologue and Mission 1. As much as I'd like to have seen more 5th game Devil Bringer, I'd also like to have seen more of Nero's adjustment period during that month._

Nero looked at his right arm. Or, more accurately, he looked at the mechanical prosthetic Nico had been working on to replace it.

It had been an impressive idea, using her father’s old research to create demon-fuelled weaponized arms. The concept worked, and the power behind Nico’s first prototype was impressive… but the fit needed some definite work.

Nero could feel the socket of the ‘Devil Breaker’ shifting as he rotated the arm. It rubbed uncomfortably against the remainder of his limb, even with a liner between the two, and Nero had hardly made it through today’s trial session; he couldn’t imagine having to use the thing in a real fight.

He removed the prosthetic and tossed it unceremoniously onto the garage work bench. ‘V’ had only given them a month, and time was almost up. If Nico couldn’t make a new arm that packed a punch _and_ felt right to wear, he’d have to go without – and he already knew how well that had gone last time. Pulling himself away from his thoughts, he retreated to the bathroom, rolling the liner down off of his forearm to make sure the friction hadn’t done any damage.

Nero, despite the healing capabilities his demonic heritage afforded to him, had a grand total of three scars: the first was the one on his shoulder, visible as a pale line over the glenohumeral joint now that there were no dark scales to disguise it. It was a visible reminder of how he had first acquired his demonic power; the second was the long scar down the middle of his abdomen, from where he had been pinned to the wall of the Order’s research lab with a demonic Gladius sword. That one marked how he had gathered enough strength to create his spectral demon form, the sum of his power; and the third? That was this one – the jagged line where the skin met at the base of his arm stump. The one that marked how he had lost everything he had worked so hard to obtain for himself.

Nero couldn’t manifest his demonic energy any more. He could barely even feel it, as though that too had been ripped from his body, along with the lower half of his limb. There were times when he thought maybe it was still there, dormant inside him, but perhaps that was just some form of phantom pain. It made him feel weak, beyond useless, and his last encounter with the demon that took it from him had only reinforced that feeling.

He remembered there was a time, long before he could recognise what his heritage made him capable of, when he would have welcomed this change.

_‘Be careful what you wish for’_ , he thought.

Nero looked at what remained of his right arm. There was a part of him that felt sick at the sight of it; the rest of him just felt defeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I headcanon that demonic healing can leave scars, but it's based on the significance of the event rather than the severity of the wound, like how Beowulf was still missing his eye after his last fight with Sparda 2,000 years ago.  
>  So basically, Nero could have an off day and get skewered by an Empusa Queen and it wouldn't leave a mark - but something like, say, the cut on Dante's hand that Vergil gave him... I bet he still has the scar from that._


	4. The Regaining of a Human Appendage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Taking place post-DMC5, some time before the end of June, before the real change in the attitude of Fortuna's citizens has truly been realised._

Kyrie looked at Nero's right arm. 

He was currently asleep, exhausted from a hard day's work, his arm folded across his torso. Even after the week or so it had been since Nero had come home from Redgrave with the limb restored, it still seemed odd to see him with it; after all, it had been near enough six years since his arms had last matched each other. 

She ran her hand lightly over the exposed skin; it was a far cry from the texture of scales she had gotten used to. This arm felt - for lack of better words - completely normal. It had the right body temperature, the soft texture of his skin, even the same fine silver hairs that his left arm did. She knew that the new arm was a fabrication, she had seen Nero dismiss it in a flash of blue light to use his Devil Breaker for a job, but it was such an impressive, seamless imitation that she felt like in time she could fool herself into believing this was how it had always been. She thought maybe Nero felt the same way. 

Kyrie traced the veins on the back of Nero's hand and he twitched in his sleep, responding by clenching his fist. Before, it would have glowed gold under her touch, and she found herself oddly wistful for that small detail, although it was hard to say that she missed the scaled hand as a whole. There were certainly benefits to Nero's right arm being human; he could wear a new jumper more than once without putting holes in it, for one thing. She knew enough to understand that it went far beyond the petty annoyances, though. 

Kyrie had never thought that the appearance of Nero's arm defined who he was, but there were plenty of people who did, and it was something that weighed heavily on him. She had watched for more than half a decade as he had slowly gained confidence in himself, and what it meant to be a descendant of Sparda, only to see him utterly lose all sense of self-worth when the arm was taken from him. 

The fact that Nero had reformed the arm he'd lost wasn't disturbing to her – it was a testament to his strength, and the fact that (of all the ways it could have looked when it regrew) this new arm looked human was just further proof that Nero wasn't the monster his heritage sometimes made him feel like. She just hoped that he could see that now, as well as she could. 

Kyrie looked at Nero's arm, and up to the peaceful look of content on his sleeping face. After everything he had been through, Nero finally had the chance to live life the way he wanted, and the way he _deserved_ , and she knew that he would take that chance with everything he had to give. 

The new arm was a new beginning, and it was perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I wanted to make them all match completely, I really did, but the Nero in my mind as I was writing just didn't have anything to say about his human arm past 'yep, I like it, it's good'._
> 
> _The way I view Nero, he dwells a lot on the past and focuses a lot of attention on the present, but doesn't look too much to the future. To that end, he wouldn't have been able to see the real benefit of having a new, human-looking arm until he could physically see the results for himself - i.e. the major boost in self-confidence when people start to respond more positively to him in the street. He's too set on his view of how he is already perceived, and how he has been treated in the past, to think of any change in the future._
> 
> _Perhaps he's just too close to the situation to see the big picture - which is why I chose, for this installment, to look at things from an outsider's perspective._


End file.
